Hello and welcome to the Casual Chat!

When thinking about a topic for today, I remembered a piece of news that caught my attention in the TCG sphere.

Recently, the game Star Wars Unlimited said that they were going to be going to a rotation system. As with any game, some players liked this change, some didn’t, some were confused, and there were opinions being shared loudly.

Now rotation is an interesting topic in the TCG space, and I think it is a topic that is well worth discussing, why it’s done, the positives and negatives, and should games even have rotation.

What is Rotation?

The first thing we need to do is define what rotation is, as some TCG players may not have it in their game, may be new, or are confused about the process.

Rotation is a term used to describe the process in which older sets of cards are no longer allowed to be played in the current format, for Magic and Pokémon this is called the Standard format.

This format usually comprises of the newest sets, usually between brand new to 3 years old depending on the game, where only cards from those sets are allowed and sets that are older are not legal for that format.

One reason that this is done, of course, is for companies to get people to play with and buy the newest cards. Sets will not always be in print or easily available and they need the card printers to focus on newer sets to sell.

A less cynical reason why is to, ideally, make it easier for newer players to enter the game. If someone wants to get into a competitive format but is just starting out, then the rotating format can be a perfect jumping off point because they can easily get the newest cards from their local game store, or if they don’t have one nearby then they can buy cards from a big box store like a Walmart or Target.

The Plus Sides

Rotation has some upsides, despite what some people may think.

One of the major upsides is that it helps keep the format fresh and constantly moving.

While there will always be some evergreen strategies, when a game rotates, the strongest cards of those older sets can’t be played. It sort of leaves a power vacuum where the cards after rotation need to find ways to fill the gaps that are left over.

What was once a dominant strategy in a meta may lose a ton of key pieces and become useless. This leads to players experimenting with the new card pool and forming newer strategies.

Another positive is that if a mechanic was oppressive to play against and was too prolific in a set to ban, then once rotation comes that mechanic will leave and potentially bring players back if they left. Game companies aren’t perfect and will make mistakes with mechanics, so if a particular mechanic was hated, then rotation can help prune it.

It also lessens the card pool, which may not seem like a good thing, but for a new player it can be a relief. A good third of the card pool can be eliminated during rotation, which means newer players have an easier time memorizing the current meta or looking for new strategies.

It’s also budget friendly, if compared to older formats. While some Standard legal cards may be pricey because of how they may affect other formats, if a new player buys from the newest sets and buys singles from the newest sets then they can keep up with the Standard format fairly easily

Compare that to someone trying to get into an older format where some staples of the format may have had a reprint in years and be much more expensive.

The Down Sides

Of course with all good sides, there are plenty of down sides to rotation as well.

The biggest downside is losing access to cards you just bought. If you are a newer player getting into the Standard format just before a set rotates and you bought cards that’ll soon not be legal to play, it feels like you wasted your money.

Sure you can play with those old cards in older formats, but those cards may not even be good in those older formats. What’s worse, a game may not even have older formats to play those older cards.

While most games nowadays will introduce an Eternal format where all older cards or most older cards are legal when they also introduce a rotating format, just like Star Wars Unlimited did, that may not always be the case.

Another significant down side is communicating what is legal in the rotating format and what isn’t legal to a newer player. It doesn’t help if a company changes how their rotation works.

Sometimes a rotation schedule is extended, shortened, or moved which can even leave veteran players scratching their heads. Magic has extended and moved their current Standard format to three years and after their 2025 rotation in the fall, the next rotation won’t occur until early 2027.

While old mechanics rotating out is fine, new mechanics that are oppressive can overstay their welcome. Sure bans exist, but there are only so many cards that can eat a ban if a mechanic is oppressive enough.

Should a game Rotate?

This is a difficult question to answer.

One aspect of rotation that I didn’t mention earlier is the fact that if a game doesn’t rotate, then there is a higher risk of that game succumbing to power creep faster.

A game company wants to sell new cards, so in order for you to play newer cards instead of older cards is to make those newer cards stronger than the older cards that you would have to play the newer cards.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is emblematic of this issue, with new sets and card bans taking the task of essentially being rotation. Sometimes older cards can come into the spotlight and create a brand new strategy, but more often than not newer cards will outpace older cards by a wide margin.

Meanwhile with a rotating format, power creep will occur, but its less steep than people make it out to be. Sure there are people complaining that current Magic cards are stronger than older Magic cards, but that line has slowly been going up for 30 years, it was bound to happen eventually.

Rotation is not the end all be all of ways to get players to buy new cards.

If rotation is introduced in a game, have it be a couple years down the line and introduce an Eternal format so that the players that have been around the longest don’t feel forced to play the newer cards and newer players don’t feel like they need to shell out a ton of money for cards that may not have been reprinted.

If there is a game where rotation is out of the question, then work hard to keep the power level steady and do what you can to make sure older cards don’t break the game, and if older cards do become relevant than to reprint them so newer players can get a chance to play with them without spending too much money.

Its a tight rope to balance, and in my opinion is a major thing that companies are still trying to get right. Only time will tell if there is a game that does rotation well, in fact it may exist and I am just unaware of its existence. There are a lot of card games out there, let me know if there is a game that does rotation well.

Thank you for reading, see you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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